I've become used to thinking of Apple's product releases as falling into two categories: "outreach" or "consolidation". Outreach releases are new products, or products introducing features that users will be unfamiliar with or that are novel enough to be headliners in adverts. Consolidation releases do essentially the same as the previous release, but faster or… Continue reading The Third Pad
Category: Computers
Hard edges, small keys
Joanna Stern reviews the MacBook Air as a Windows laptop. I enjoyed this—I've considered in the past whether the MacBook Air would be a suitable laptop for me even though most of the time I don't run OS/X. (Conclusion: probably not any more, though it might have seemed that way once.) She does highlight the… Continue reading Hard edges, small keys
Operating system updates
Google have released a version of their Chrome web browser for Android, and it seems to be rather good—but it only runs on the very latest version of Android, version 4. Which is a bit of an annoyance, because hardly anybody has that version. Glancing at the 12 most popular Android phones on the Expansys… Continue reading Operating system updates
Is music recommendation difficult?
My research department works on programming computers to analyse music. In this field, researchers like to have some idea of whether a problem is naturally easy or difficult for humans. For example, tapping along with the beat of a musical recording is usually easy, and it's fairly instinctive—you don't need much training to do it.… Continue reading Is music recommendation difficult?
End of the laptop line
I realised not long ago that, for my purposes, laptop PCs have stopped improving. It didn't happen recently: it just took me a long time to notice. In fact I reckon it happened about five years ago. My decline and theirs The first laptop I bought with my own money was a Vaio R600MX in… Continue reading End of the laptop line
The Breakfast Post 